Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use occupy in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Occupy means to fill. Example: “The film occupied three hours of my time.”

Examples of occupy by meaning

verbTo fill.

  • The film occupied three hours of my time.

verbTo possess or use the time or capacity of; to engage the service of.

  • The film occupied me for three hours.
  • I occupy myself with gardening for a few hours every day.

verbTo fill or hold (an official position or role).

  • I occupy the post of deputy cat catcher.

verbTo hold the attention of.

  • I occupied her friend while he made his proposal.

verbTo fill space.

  • The historic mansion occupied two city blocks.

verbTo live or reside in.

  • With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill....

verbTo have, or to have taken, possession or control of (a territory).

  • Rupert, with his usual untamable energy, was scouring the country — but at first in the wrong direction, that of Aylesbury, another keypoint in the outer ring of Oxford defences, which he occupied but could not hold.1975, Esmé Cecil Wingfield-Stratford, King Charles and King Pym, 1637-1643, page 330
  • Positions were occupied, but could not be held.1983, Arthur Keppel-Jones, Rhodes and Rhodesia: The White Conquest of Zimbabwe, 1884-1902, page 462
  • Germany occupied France for three years while France struggled to make payments that were a condition of surrender.1991, Werner Spies, John William Gabriel, Max Ernst collages: the invention of the surrealist universe, page 333

More sentences with occupy

  • All the beds of the hotel are currently occupied, but we have a free room tomorrow.From the entry currently
  • Most of the site was occupied by huts, but there was an open area in the centre.From the entry open
  • You may not move a piece to a square already occupied by one of your own pieces.From the entry square
  • All the window seats were occupied, so she took an inside seat.From the entry inside
  • The Pauli Exclusion Principle prevents two fermions from occupying the same state.From the entry principle
  • If you collaborate with the occupying forces, you will be shot.From the entry collaborate
  • This country house was occupied by nobles in the 16th century.From the entry noble
  • The infantry were destroyed after the enemy carpet bombed the ground they were occupying.From the entry carpet bomb
  • The volume occupied by the star's exploding gases underwent a trillionfold increase.From the entry trillionfold
  • The fontinal cliff vegetation occupies moist rocky banks, damp ledges, and dripping rocks.From the entry fontinal
  • The city was at the mercy of the occupying forces.From the entry at
  • The store is huge, occupying an entire city block.From the entry city block
  • The stall on the left is occupied.From the entry occupied
  • Jane was the chorister of her congregation's choir, and that occupied much of her time on the weekends.From the entry chorister
  • She is occupied at the moment.From the entry occupied
  • During World War II, the Home Army was the largest underground army in Europe organized to fight the German (and Soviet) occupying forces.From the entry Home Army
  • The headmaster was an even stricter censor of his boarding pupils’ correspondence than the enemy censors had been of his own when the country was occupied.From the entry censor
  • These two jobs occupy the top two spots on the highest risk careers.2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian. From the entry on the job
  • It is currently occupied by Taiwan but is also claimed by China, the Philippines and Vietnam.2022 April 28, “China says Taiwan ‘playing with fire’ over alleged Taiping Island plans”, in Radio Free Asia, archived from the original…. From the entry Taiping
  • Moscow's hastily-organised referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine coming complete with house-to-house searches of ballot recipients.2022 September 23, 0:07 from the start, in As Putin goes for broke: What next after Ukraine annexation referendums? • FRANCE 24 English…. From the entry get out the vote
  • By occupying non-abject, empowered roles, people in prison ultimately create non-abject existences.2022, Gregory Bruno, Theory and Practice for Literacy in the Prison Classroom, page 58. From the entry non-abject
  • Crores and crores of worlds occupy the unending expanse of the Universe; the vast expanse, beyond measure.2022, R. Shanthi, “The Universal Vision in Tagore and Ramalinga Vallalar”, in The Universal Man in Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Arut…. From the entry croreth
  • On the night of the 27th they took Changsha and occupied Nanchang on July 30.2020 [1930 August 4], Yinan (金一南) Jin, Misery and Glory: The Long March and Its Antecedents, Foreign Languages Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page…. From the entry Huayuan
  • The warehouses that first occupied the triangle hosted shipments in transit from one business to another: B2B.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24…. From the entry B2B
  • Malcolm’s vision was now almost totally occupied by the shimmering dazzle of the scotoma.2019, Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth, David Fickling Books (2020), page 373. From the entry scotoma
  • This deep sense of some deep basic wrong occupying my surrounding world.2016, Paul Quintanilla, Master Tom. From the entry sallow
  • And an entire wing of YouTube is occupied by these videos, some with remarkably high viewership.2016, Aaron Duplantier, Authenticity and How We Fake It: Belief and Subjectivity in Reality TV, Facebook and YouTube, McFarland, →ISBN…. From the entry hauler
  • Occupying the dense forest understory, cupwings generally have dark brown plumage and a very short tail.2016, Handbook of Bird Biology, volume cupwings, page 55. From the entry cupwing
  • It was occupied by his cat, Fluffbutt, who had claimed it as its throne.2016, Martin V. Schulte, edited by Amy Kushner Schulte, Genetic Drift, Schulte Books, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry fluffbutt
  • Eg: “His ambiguphobic recipe for yoghurted veal occupies seven pages and four schematic drawings.”2015 September 11, “From Schadenfreude to ringxiety: an encyclopedia of emotions”, in The Guardian. From the entry yoghurted

Meaning of occupy

  1. verb To fill.
  2. verb To possess or use the time or capacity of; to engage the service of.
  3. verb To fill or hold (an official position or role).

Full definition of occupy

Questions about occupy in a sentence

How do you use occupy in a sentence?
Occupy is used as a verb. For example: “The film occupied three hours of my time.”
What is a short sentence with occupy?
“She is occupied at the moment.”
What does occupy mean?
Occupy means to fill.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: occupy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use occupy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/occupy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.